


there's a dead man clinging to my aura (let go of the past)

by cougarlips



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: 10 years late to the jetko party but im here, Canonical Character Death, Gay Zuko (Avatar), Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, M/M, POV Zuko (Avatar), Reminiscing, War, i will die on this hill, jet and zuko are v similar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:48:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22571251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cougarlips/pseuds/cougarlips
Summary: Jet didn’t know Zuko. He didn’t know about the inner workings of the Fire Lord’s family. He didn’t know Prince Zuko, son of Fire Lord Ozai and Lady Ursa was on the run from his own people. He didn’t know Zuko, a fire bender and Fire Nation citizen.Jet knew Lee.
Relationships: Jet & Zuko (Avatar), Jet/Zuko (Avatar), Katara & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 374





	there's a dead man clinging to my aura (let go of the past)

**Author's Note:**

> title is from kesha's song cowboy blues  
> also i'm like 10 years late to this ship but damn if it isn't completely fucking me up? jetko is my TypeTM and if u know nothing about me, know i thrive off of angst

Jet.

Part of Zuko wanted to say fuck him.

Fuck Jet.

Fuck everything about his stupid, beautiful face and annoying, enchanting demeanor.

It was bad enough the first night on the ferry. Zuko hadn’t been on the run for very long, but he didn’t give much thought to stealing if it meant he’d have food in his stomach -- and Jet only encouraged it. Encouraged _him_.

Jet would’ve hated him.

The juxtaposition of it made Zuko’s head hurt. Jet, the Earth Kingdom boy who’d been orphaned and left abandoned because of the Fire Nation’s war, would have hated everything about Zuko, the crown prince. Whether he was deemed traitor or not, dishonored or not -- the fact alone that Zuko was a fire bender would’ve been enough for Jet to despise him.

(And it was.)

But Jet didn’t know Zuko. He didn’t know about the inner workings of the Fire Lord’s family. He didn’t know Prince Zuko, son of Fire Lord Ozai and Lady Ursa was on the run from his own people. He didn’t know _Zuko_ , a fire bender and Fire Nation citizen.

Jet knew Lee. 

Lee, a refugee with the mark of a survivor blasted across his face.

Lee, who fit right in with the other refugees with a backstory too painful to talk about.

Zuko hated himself more and more the longer he lived inside the Earth Kingdom. No, he wasn’t aware of how bad the war had been for the other nations, but that wasn’t an excuse. The Fire Nation had no excuse.

It was almost… a relief, Zuko felt, to exist as Lee. To be just as worn down as the next person without having to explain why or justify it.

It was a relief, almost, to be not only understood for stewing in his own anger, but _allowed_ , as he was just another refugee whose life had been torn apart by the war.

But then there was Jet, the stupid, beautiful boy, who was so like Zuko it made his head spin.

Alone, left parentless from the war, steeped in hatred for so many years it all started to blur, only Jet’s hatred was external. Jet didn’t have a reason to hate _himself_. He hated the Fire Nation and fire benders, not himself.

Zuko, too, left alone, parentless, steeped in hatred -- but hatred toward himself. Hatred for dishonoring his family, for losing his right to the throne. But his hatred was never toward his people.

Zuko and Jet, two sides of the same coin. Two halves of one whole.

Even after Jet found him out and his actions swept him up by the Dai Li, the stupid, beautiful boy haunted Zuko.

Zuko could’ve _become_ Jet, or someone exactly like him, in another life. He could’ve been someone so consumed by hatred he turned to murder. He could’ve turned on his own allies after discovering a single connection tying them to the object of his own hatred.

He never saw Jet again after the Dai Li took him away, but in his defense, he never expected to see him again anyways.

But that stupid play…. 

Fuck that play, and fuck Jet, the stupid, beautiful boy.

“He died?”

It was Katara who happened to stay up with him, and she turned a confused expression his way before she understood and it was replaced by barely suppressed pain.

“Long Feng stabbed him through the stomach,” she told him. He appreciated the blunt-edge to her words, her lack of sugarcoating. “You knew him?”

Zuko took a moment but he nodded. Maybe she felt for him, too, if the look of remorse and mourning were any indication.

“Sokka, Aang, and I met him and the rest of the Freedom Fighters on our way to the North Pole. He was going to bomb an Earth Kingdom village on the off-chance it would kill the Fire Nation soldiers who’d invaded the town.”

Zuko closed his eyes, but a part of him wasn’t surprised by her words. Yes, that sounded like something Jet would’ve wanted to let go, to put behind him. Something he was ashamed of enough to want to escape the memory of it.

“Sokka managed to get everyone in the town to safety before he could light the blasting jelly, but we didn’t see him again until we made it to Ba Sing Se.”

“I met him on the ferry over there,” Zuko told her. “He said he wanted a fresh start. A clean slate, you know. I guess that’s why.”

She nodded slowly. “Yeah,” she replied. “He found us and offered to help find Appa, but when we got to Lake Laogai he….”

Zuko stilled, his eyes narrowing. “He was with you guys under the lake?”

Katara looked at him in confusion. “Yeah. Him, Smellerbee, and Longshot. After the Dai Li took him, they pretty much wiped his memory of the Fire Nation -- what they did to his family and why he was a Freedom Fighter in the first place. Long Feng _did_ hijack his mind, but he snapped out of it when we reminded him of why he fought in the first place.”

She looked like she was going to continue until Zuko brought his hands to his hair, as if he was cradling his forehead in the palm of his hand. “Zuko?” she asked.

He couldn’t help a cough, something wet that could’ve been mistaken for a laugh, or maybe a cry. He wasn’t sure what exactly he was feeling.

“I was there, too,” he said, a desperate sound coming out of his mouth. It felt very strange, he thought.

“What?”

“I was under the lake that night to steal your bison, but Uncle followed me and talked me into freeing him. I could’ve been rooms away, and he was dying a couple hundred yards away?”

Katara’s eyes were full of concern, and she turned her body to face Zuko now.

“I tried to heal him, but his wounds….” she stopped, wincing. Her death hurt her, too, Zuko realized.

At least he wasn’t alone.

“You loved him?” he heard himself ask, and he was almost surprised when she waited a few moments before she nodded.

“I feel like…” and she paused, trying to find the correct words, struggling to explain herself correctly, before continuing, “if I didn’t have Sokka or Aang… I wuld’ve ended up just like him.”

She looked into the horizon, at the sun beginning to peak over the skyline. “You saw me with the Raiders. I almost killed them, just like he did.”

Zuko wiped the back of his hand across his face. His left cheek felt _too_ dry, as it always did, twisted and ugly and warped. His right cheek felt tight with tears.

“Me, too, Katara. I think I loved him, too.”


End file.
